The school said in several filings yesterday the court
should consider tripling the damages for willful infringement,
Carnegie Mellon is also arguing that Marvell should pay ongoing
royalties of as much as $1.50 for every chip sold after July 29,
2012, and Marvell should be ordered to stop selling chips that
infringe the disputed patents.

“Marvell has been willfully infringing CMU’s patents for
more than a decade, and it and its founders have reaped enormous
profits from this misconduct,” the school said in a filing.

Marvell has pledged to challenge the verdict, which came
down Dec. 26.

Carnegie Mellon filed suit in federal court in Pittsburgh
in March 2009. It claimed that Marvell infringed two patents,
issued in 2001 and 2002, that cover ways to detect data stored
on a computer’s hard-disk drive by filtering out noise or
unwanted electrical signals. The school in court papers claimed
that at least nine types of Marvell’s circuits use its
inventions.

The case is Carnegie Mellon University v. Marvell
Technology Group Ltd., 09-cv-290, U.S. District Court, Western
District of Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh).

For more patent news, click here.

Trademark

‘This American Life’ Warns That ‘This American Whore’ Infringes

Producers of “This American Life,” a program broadcast on
National Public Radio, have sent cease-and-desist notices to a
San Francisco sex worker over her use of “This American Whore”
for her podcasts, SF Weekly reported.

Siouxsie Q, who created the podcasts, said that in January
she began getting warning e-mails from lawyers representing
Chicago Public Radio and “This American Life” host Ira Glass,
according to the newspaper.

She told SF Weekly that many who follow her on Twitter
Inc.’s messaging service have told her that the name “This
American Whore” is worth fighting for.

The newspaper reported that Apple Inc.’s iTunes music store
began listing Siouxsie Q’s podcasts as “This American W***e”
even before she started receiving trademark-infringement
warnings from Chicago Public Radio.

Dish ‘Racecar’ May Deliver Content to Pay-Television Subscribers

Dish Network Corp., the satellite pay-television service,
has filed an application to register “racecar” as a trademark.

According to the database of the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office, the Englewood, Colorado-based company said it plans to
use the mark for modems, routers, the transmission of digital
data and signals, satellite dishes, smartphones, and access to
the Internet for use in wireless communications systems.

Ron Paul Asks WIPO for Control Over RonPaul.com Domain Name

Former U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul has filed a
trademark complaint with the World Intellectual Property
Organization’s Arbitration and Mediation Center.

Paul is asking WIPO for control over the RonPaul.Org and
RonPaul.Com Internet domain names. According to his Feb. 7
filing, the names were registered in bad faith and he didn’t
authorize them. He said the sites are being used to sell “Ron
Paul” merchandise that competes with his merchandise sales.

He said in his filing that an offer was made to sell him
the domain names for $848,000, “an exorbitant amount of
money.” So far he hasn’t filed any other legal action with
respect to the domain names, according to his petition.

The operators of the websites sent Paul a letter telling
him they secured the domain names “to make sure they would not
fall into enemy hands.” They said their sites were part of
their grassroots support for the candidate and that they had
“put our lives on hold and invested 4.5 years of our life into
you.”

The website operators said they have T-shirt designs and
social media accounts linked to the domain names, and if they
are forced to give them up, “such an abrupt change would lead
to chaos on the Internet and -- at least temporarily -- disrupt
the message of liberty.”

For more trademark news, click here.

Copyright

Youku Tudou Says Xunlei’s Infringement Suit is Publicity Grab

Youku Tudou Inc., China’s biggest online video site, has
responded to copyright infringement claims made by a Chinese
competitor, The Next Web news site reported.

Xunlei Ltd. is claiming that Youku Tudou has on its site 13
movies and television programs to which it has no right,
according to Next Web.

Beijing-based Youku Tudou said it has agreements with all
the major content producers and characterized Xunlei’s
infringement claims as a quest for publicity, according to Next
Web.

The infringement case hasn’t yet been accepted by the
court, which is in recess for the Chinese New Year celebrations,
Next Web reported.

Retraction Watch Says It’s Accused of Infringing Own Copyrights

A website that tracks scientific papers that have been
retracted said it’s received 10 takedown notices under the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act over posts about Anil Potti, a
cancer researcher who has had 19 papers retracted. The takedown
notices went to San Francisco’s Automattic Inc., which owns the
WordPress service that hosts the blog.

Retraction Watch said all of the requests came from a
single source, NewsBulet.In, which, according to its takedown
requests, claims to be “a famous news firm in India.”

According to Retraction Watch, the content about the
researcher that the Indian source claims is infringing does
appear on the NewsBulet.In website.

“If you click on any of the NewsBulet.In URLs provided in
the takedown notice, you will indeed find the text -- and images
-- from ten of our posts about Anil Potti. But as will be
abundantly clear to anyone who does so that our text was placed
on NewsBulet.In, not the other way around,” Retraction Watch
said in a blog posting.

Retraction Watch said that NewsBulet.In has it backwards.
“NewsBulet.In is violating our copyright; we are not violating
theirs,” according to Retraction Watch’s posting.

For more copyright news, click here.

Trade Secrets/Industrial Espionage

Columbia, Entro Settle Trade Secrets Dispute for $1.1 Million

Columbia Industries Inc., a maker of equipment and
machinery used in oil and gas fields, settled a trade secrets
case it brought against competitor Entro Industries.

Entro, based in Hillsboro, Oregon, as is Columbia, was
accused of trade-secret theft, breach of fiduciary duty, and
unjust enrichment. The suit was filed in February 2012 in Oregon
state court.

According to a Columbia statement, it accepted a $1.1
million payment from Entro to settle the dispute.

In its statement, Entro said that the suit was dismissed in
its entirety by a Washington County, Oregon, court. The
settlement “allows Entro to put the claimant’s issues behind us
and to move ahead,” company President Shawn Smith said in the
statement. He said the court didn’t place any restriction on
“on what we can do for current and future customers.” Smith
was a co-defendant with his company in the suit.

Iran Claims to Be Producing Clones of Boeing-Built Drone

Iran claims it has produced copies of the U.S. ScanEagle
drones, according to Fars News Agency of Iran.

The Iranian drones are based on a ScanEagle built by the
Boeing Co. and captured by that country’s military forces,
according to Fars.

General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC Aerospace
Force, told Fars that the cloned Boeing drone is now in
production, and photos of the production line have been
released.

Previously the Iranian military shot down a US RQ-170 drone
made by Lockheed Martin Corp., Fars reported.